Posted on December 30, 2025 in Featured Review
Authors:
Jess Bonnan-WhiteImperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago, by Andy Clarno et al. Minnesota, 2024. 382p ISBN 9781517917708 $116.00, ISBN 9781517917715 $28.95, ISBN 9781452971711 $28.95
Imperial Policing is a coauthored project developed from a series of seminars and collaborations between a network of faculty and PhD candidates at the University of Illinois, Chicago, which formed the basis of the Policing in Chicago Research Group. The primary authors include four current faculty members, two PhD candidates, and one community-based advocate. The authors clearly state that the book represents a project based on abolition; that is, they write from a perspective that envisions the world without police, prisons, territorial borders, or warfare. From the outset, readers are challenged to acknowledge narratives that contest normative models of criminal justice. Audiences are thereby reminded that systems of criminal justice in the United States, as in every local, state, and national jurisdiction, are creations of those same entities—i.e., there are no uniform, fixed models of how a society could and should enforce social norms and legal frameworks. While this abolitionist approach might stand as a barrier to some audiences, those very readers are likely the ones who should listen to these narratives most carefully, as the authors demand that we question the permanency of systems we take for granted as immutable.
As the title implies, the authors set forth an argument for understanding the structures of law enforcement, immigration, and national security as part of a broader imperial enterprise. Their foundational argument considers policing and law enforcement agencies, immigration authorities, and national security bodies at the local, state, federal, and international levels as components of carceral networks. These coordinating networks, they argue, use surveillance, data collection and sharing, and analytical and predictive tools to form a global system of what they term “imperial policing.” These networks, or webs, were created as police and law enforcement agencies in the United States participated in three “wars”: the “War on Crime,” the “War on Terror,” and the “War on Immigrants.” Each of these constructs archetypal enemies (e.g., Black gang members, Muslim terrorists, illegal/criminal aliens, respectively) to enable policing and national security structures to employ law enforcement strategies based on counterinsurgency and carceral liberalism. The latter presents activities like community-based interventions or community policing as guises for communities to willingly engage with systems of dispossession, exploitation, and exclusion.
Scholars, practitioners, and policy makers, however, are reminded that data do not merely represent trends, frequencies, or events. Instead, the act of collecting data remains rooted in assumptions and theories about communities, community members, and causes of crime and disorder.
Imperial Policing also covers a very important development in the study of crime and policing: the role of mass data. The authors contend that imperial policing is based on collecting data and sharing databases built to monitor and record the activities of targeted communities. Data are then used to establish “facts” about communities and their members, which are used to justify the intensification of further surveillance and policing action. Out of the polarized rhetoric surrounding policing, a new proposition has emerged that suggests data-based policing (also referred to as evidence-based policing) offers a less biased, scientific approach to policing strategy. Some reform advocates posit that data-based strategies are a vehicle for greater accountability and stronger police-community relations. Scholars, practitioners, and policy makers, however, are reminded that data do not merely represent trends, frequencies, or events. Instead, the act of collecting data remains rooted in assumptions and theories about communities, community members, and causes of crime and disorder. No matter how rigorous the analysis, data still represent the actions and motivations of human beings, both researchers and subjects alike. The authors argue that in systems of imperial policing, the human actor is systematically removed from data through processing and analysis. As such, data are collected and stored in databases as supposedly objective facts, divorced from the social contexts and the biases and motivations of the researchers and analysts who built them. Through producing, cleansing, and circulating data, this information is weaponized by the state to replicate the same systems of carceral control that the scientific analyses of these data are used to justify. This argument is likely to be contested by some readers. Discussions about epistemology—the study of how we know what we know, which inevitably pertains to issues of data collection—should be central to any sound research and analytical practice. To be clear, based on their abolitionist lens, the authors do not advocate for better data collection. However, their arguments can certainly stand as a point of reflection for those practicing within the fields of criminology and criminal justice.
The authors use the introduction, as well as chapters 1 and 2, to set out the framework they employ to discuss the use of data in the three police “wars,” as well as key concepts like imperial policing, abolition, carceral liberalism, and “carceral dif/fusion.” The remainder of the book uses case studies to demonstrate the application of data in Chicago and throughout the United States. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the experiences of community members targeted for monitoring in the War on Crime and the War on Terror, respectively. Readers are introduced to methods by which the archetypal criminals associated with each “war”—e.g., the Black gang member and the Arab/Muslim terrorist—are built. Chapters 5 and 6 center on the last of the three police “wars,” that of the War on Immigration, and the development of the illegal/criminal alien archetype. Throughout chapters 3–6, the authors discuss the linkages between the different categories of war and how each manifests through intervention and community-based programs presented as strategies of harm reduction.
As with any complex social system, those invested in harm reduction should make an effort to understand the framework of opposing narratives, even if they do not align with self-held beliefs.
Readership will likely vary based on every reader’s initial understanding of the criminal justice system and intelligence apparatuses in the United States, as well as where one falls on the ideological spectrum. The volume is dense, but it provides case studies relevant to current events, including protests and activism connected with Israel’s current bombing of the Gaza Strip, as well as the second Trump administration’s immigration policies. As with any complex social system, those invested in harm reduction should make an effort to understand the framework of opposing narratives, even if they do not align with self-held beliefs. That said, the book, or even the chapters taken in isolation, would be very appropriate for advanced undergraduate or graduate-level courses in criminal justice, sociology, anthropology, legal studies, and related fields. Imperial Policing is also suitable for practitioners, particularly those within the criminal justice system or in the nonprofit and advocacy sectors, to effectively grasp why community members respond with such vehement opposition to reforming police policies, adopting new techniques and tools, and implementing community-based interventions.
Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
Interdisciplinary Subjects: African and African American Studies, Islamic Studies, Latin American & Latino Studies, Law & Society, Urban Studies, Racial Justice
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Sociology
Jess Bonnan-White is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Stockton University. She specializes in the study of homeland security, emergency management, human security, and community response to conflict and crisis.
 | Leslie Grover’s review of We Do This ‘Til We Free Us (2021), “Honoring Community without Penalizing Blackness: An Essential Primer on Prison Abolition“ |
 | Kevin Anderson’s review of Becoming Abolitionists (2022), “More than a Slogan: Derecka Purnell Champions Meaningful Commitment to Abolition and Social Justice“ |
 | Meredith Roman’s review of Border and Rule (2022), “Conceptualizing Humane Immigration: Recognizing Borders as Violent Tools of Racial Ordering“ |
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